Private prison in Youngstown launches its job-saving campaign

YOUNGSTOWN — The company that owns the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Hubbard Road has launched a campaign to retain NEOCC’s contract to house federally convicted and sentenced undocumented immigrants.

Corrections Corp. of America, the for-profit Nashville-Tenn.-based company that owns the prison, has created a new website, www.JobsForYoungstown.com, which asks local residents to write to their elected officials and U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials before Feb. 28 in support of renewal of the inmate housing contract here.

Loss of that contract would eliminate most of NEOCC’s 418 jobs, CCA said.

“The facility has an excellent track record in operating for the Bureau of Prisons,” over the past decade, said Steven Owen, CCA’s senior director of public affairs.

“It’s a well-run facility with state-of-the-art security. It’s independently accredited by the American Correctional Association,” he said of NEOCC, for which CCA submitted its contract renewal bid to the bureau in August.